MacLochlainns Weblog

It’s been a terribly busy three weeks, needless to say when I got back to working my Mac Pro video card failed. That was Saturday, and I’m waiting on the replacement card. Thank goodness for AppleCare because the card is still $200.

In the meantime, I was stuck without being able to use Screen Sharing. A friend, Kyle, told me how to use Target Disk Mode to boot my Mac Pro on my MacBook Pro, which let me enable Screen Sharing without trying to sort through the configuration files. This basically lets me use my MacBook Pro as a bridge until I get the new video card.

I figured it would be nice to label how to do it. First, you’ll need a FireWire 800 cable or with older equipment a FireWire 400 cable will work. Connect the two machines, then:

1. Boot the disabled machine in Disk Target Mode by holding down the “T” key when turning on the physical machine.
2. Boot the target console by holding down the Option key.
3. You’ll see two disks, one should be the standard silver disk icon and the other a gold remote disk icon. Use the right arrow key to select the gold remote disk, then click the return key.

Your target machine is now booted off the remote machine. You can now navigate to System Preferences, choose Sharing, and check the Checkbox for Screen Sharing. Now you can shutdown both systems and use screen sharing or continue to work this way. It’s really your preference. I like screen sharing because then I can use the resources from both machines.

This may be old hat to many but I’ve got a hunch it’s news to others. While I knew there was a way to do this, I’d never had to try it until now.

An update 4/27/10, AppleCare got me the replacement video card. I installed it and it worked like a charm.